Jaime IV, ASOS / x / Cyprian Leowitz, Eclipses luminarium, BSB / The Light Of Stars, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow / A Case of You, Joni Mitchell / Ğaʿfer Tayyar, Recueil de traités d'astrologie, BNF Gallica / On Board, Alana Henderson and Joshua Burnside / x / The Astronomer, Kahlil Gibran / Jaime VI, ASOS
Ilia fucking Malinin’s world record breaking free skate
Oh my God every bit of this is wild
-when he does the first big jump the announcers start screaming. I don’t understand enough of what I’m looking at to get what about this is breaking records but the announcers screaming was a pretty big clue
-He’s dancing to music from Succession????? I don’t recognize all of it but some of it is definitely the theme from Succession. At one point the audience claps along to the music. And I’m not sure if it’s out of support for the skater or because they like the song 🤣
-when he finishes he just lays down on the ice incredible
THAT’S MY BOY!!! I SKATE AT HIS RINK!!!
That first big jump is a Quadruple Axel. It’s 4.5 rotations in the air (you take off forwards rather than backwards, which is the extra half rotation). Nobody else in the world can do this jump it’s so hard. He is the first and only person to ever land it cleanly, much less consistently. He had to land it cleanly here to have any hope of winning the World Champion title.
Yes, he’s skating to music from Succession! The audience is clapping in support because he was doing so well (also because it was hosted in Montreal and the audience was very supportive of all the skaters that evening).
He lays down on the ice because he just broke multiple world records. He landed all 6 types of quadruple jumps cleanly, which no one has ever done at all (again, because he’s the only one that can do the quad Axel), much less in a single program like this. This was an insane feat of athletic ability! If you go watch the other guys who competed against him, Yuma Kagiyama was in second place by 20 fucking points, and Yuma skated with no falls. This is Micheal Phelps / Katie Ledecky levels of smashing the competition (sorry the only other sport I know is swimming).
Some other notes for everyone:
Ilia listed that first jump as a Triple Axel on the sheet you give to the judges, meaning that he wasn’t committed to doing the Quad Axel. (Technically you’re not committed to anything on the sheet but it’s generally your “plan” for the program.) He also doesn’t do a quad axel in the 6-minute warmup beforehand when he does go and do it in the program, so it was a complete toss-up as to whether he was going to go for it. It’s incredible that he manages to land the jump so perfectly without warming it up first!
He was 3rd coming into this skate from the previous short program. (All skating competitions require you to skate 2 different programs, 1 short and 1 long.) In order to win the title, he was going to have to skate without any falls, especially because his one strong point is his jumps and other skaters are stronger in other areas. There are many, many skaters who fall on their quad jumps, even when they’re just doing one. It is so fucking hard to do even one of the 6 types of quad jumps. And he just does all 6! In one program! Insanity!
He did a 4 Lutz - 3 Flip at the halfway point of his program. Almost no one puts a Flip on the end of their combos, it’ll usually be a Salchow instead because it’s much easier. The only other skater I can think of to put a Flip on the end of a combo is Shoma Uno (who was also at these championships but didn’t have a good skate).
His last jumping pass was a combo that was supposed to be a 3 Lutz - 2 Axel. He decided, in the moment, to change the 2 Axel to a 3 Axel. Nobody else has ever attempted this, much less succeeded. It is orders of magnitude more difficult to do another rotation to the second jump in a combo, at the very end of a 4.5 minute sprint no less.
In short, this kid is wild, had the performance of a lifetime, and I had the blessed opportunity to witness it.
sansa and tyrion’s marriage is interesting from tyrion’s perspective. he is canny enough to understand that she is only saying things to please and mollify him, but he also genuinely thinks that she is “so dutiful” that she would tell him what she prays for in her frequent visits to the sept (and he thinks she’s excessively pious). as the reader we know she’s praying for lannister annihilation and would never admit this out loud, but tyrion doesn’t seem to really… get that sansa hates him and his family. even after everything, the multiple beatings, being terrorized by joffrey, the entire forced marriage, THE MURDER OF HER DEAR BELOVED DAD - he has a perception of her as a simple dutiful girl whose inner world consists of piety and supplication. that her prayers are a form of resistance and escape doesn’t occur to him. he also exercises a very similar lack of understanding with shae - he thinks she’s angry with him bc she lost her jewels and silks, not bc she is scared of her unstable position.
Yes, all of this. It’s why he’s completely blindsided when Sansa disappears after Joffrey’s death. To his credit, Tyrion does quickly realize she was involved and why. (Not just Cersei’s jumping to conclusions, but reasoning it out, and realizing she couldn’t have acted alone.) And to his credit, he chooses not to blame Sansa in his defense. (Not that it would have helped no matter what he said, because both Cersei and Tywin were happy to have a reason to kill him/send him to the NW). But he does still resent Sansa for not feeling the same way about him re her marriage vows to defend and protect!
And I just get so frustrated because he’s so close to getting it. He’s almost there. But then he centers on “of course she had no loyalty to a dwarf”. No. No, Tyrion. It’s because you’re a Lannister. Your family killed all of hers. She’s thirteen years old. She was forced to marry you. You’re so very close and yet so far.
And yes, other people might think that about Sansa, but you’re smarter than that! Agh, it’s maddening.
I’m coming back to this because I had some time to think about Tyrion and, in hindsight, it’s so obvious that he would completely misinterpret why Sansa resents him.
All his life he was hated and derided for being a dwarf and the Lannister name was the only protection he had.
No, seriously, think about it.
Tywin and Cersei hate Tyrion because he’s a deformed creature that killed Joanna. All other Lannisters, bar Jaime, and all the servants at the Rock keep their distance so they don’t become targets of Tywin’s hate. Other nobles mock him. The one time Tyrion thought he found somebody who loved him for himself, Jaime straight up told him that no, he paid the girl to be nice to him, and then Tywin proceeded to traumatize them both for life.
The one thing that spared him certain death as an infant, as can happen among smallfolk, was that Tywin did not want to be accused of kinslaying. And if Lord Tywin Lannister says something, nobody in Westerlands would dare to contradict him.
So Tyrion grows up hearing that if he wasn’t a Lannister, he would have been killed long ago. If he wasn’t a Lannister, Tysha would have never even looked at him. If he wasn’t a Lannister, he would be nothing.
At the same time, his siblings grow up hearing how being a Lannister makes them better than anyone else in the world. How they are smarter, prettier, more powerful and richer than all other people. If only these stupid lower lifeforms could recognise their greatness, then everything would be as it should be - with the Lannisters at the top of the world and everyone else having to be content with the scraps offered.
So of fucking course, Tyrion doesn’t connect Sansa’s hate to the fact he’s a Lannister. As far as he knows, everyone wants to be a Lannister. Sansa would be perfectly fine with marrying any of his male cousins.
It’s the fact that he’s a dwarf that is the deal-breaker for her, no other option, no siree.
still love the way grrm decided to write this so damn much. other than the obvious romantic undertones of it all the “so he did” is so terse and simple and blunt as if it is the most straightforward and obvious thing in the world. jumping unarmed into a pit with a live bear to save this woman is the most sound thing in the world. wanting her is the most sound thing in the world. doing the right thing is the most sound thing in the world. there is no justification for even a blink of hesitation. so he did!
this is also why i cant put into words how much i dislike when ppl act like this was some calculated decision on his part. hell no it was something fucking visceral for him. what else is there to do than leap into the damn pit head first and go get her???
I might be a little biased but I’m honestly starting to believe that there’s no purer form of love than the defensive spite you see from biologists that have devoted their life to the study of a maligned or misunderstood species. For example:
The hyena biologist that arranged for Disney animators to come sketch captive hyenas for The Lion King film (Laurence Frank) was so incensed when the animals were depicted as villains in the movie that he later included boycotting the film on a list of ways the average person could help hyena conservation.
Though it’s commonly known that Charles Darwin’s distaste for parasitic wasps played a role in his development of evolution theory (since he felt no loving God would create animals with such a disturbing life cycle), the biologists who study these wasps find it an unfair characterization. When they were tasked with coming up with a common name for the family of parasitic wasps (Ichneumonidae) that old Charles so disliked, they proposed the name “Darwin Wasps” to spite the famous naturalist who had insulted their beloved family of insects.
Parasitologist Tommy Leung was so frustrated with the way people write about parasites to evoke horror and gore that he started writing a Parasite of the Day blog, that specifically avoids inflammatory or unsettling language to describe them. He also illustrates different species in colorful anime art on Twitter in a series called Parasite Monster Girls—which he calls his “love letter to parasites.”
I guess I’m just saying that if you’re a biologist studying an unpopular species and you have a little bit of a chip on your shoulder about it you can always count on me to be in your corner if you want to get a little petty with the public!
(ID: tags that read “when does a monster stop being a monster? when you love it”)
everything else in here aside where does this idea of reckless with borderline suicidal tendencies jaime “i never feared death” lannister as someone very fixated on self preservation come from??
“No one can fault Lannister on his courage,” Glover said. “When he saw that he was lost, he rallied his retainers and fought his way up the valley, hoping to reach Lord Robb and cut him down. And almost did.”
Jaime would be battering his host to bloody bits against the walls of Riverrun, and the Others take their chances.
“Why should I tell you anything?”
“To save your life.”
“You think I fear death?” That seemed to amuse him.
His cousin groaned. “We can’t hope to defeat eighteen.”
“Did I say we could? The best we can hope for is to die with swords in our hands.” He was perfectly sincere. Jaime Lannister had never been afraid of death.
Two swords would be even better. One for the wench and one for me. We’d die, but we’d take half of them down to hell with us.
Let them kill me, he thought, so long as I die fighting, a blade in hand.
“Jaime, what are you doing?”
“Dying,” he whispered back.
“No,” she said, “no, you must live.” He wanted to laugh.
“Stop telling me what do, wench. I’ll die if it pleases me.”
“Are you so craven?”
“What else can I do, but die?”
Just more shit in the bucket. Jaime resolved to be the first man on the battlements. And with this golden hand of mine, most like the first to fall.
Jaime smiled. “I agree. I am as unfit to guard the king as you are. So draw that sword you’re fondling, and we shall see how your two hands fare against my one. At the end one of us will be dead, and the Kingsguard will be improved.” He rose. “Or, if you prefer, you may return to your duties.” […] The man is craven, and a good thing. Though fat, aging, and never more than ordinary, Ser Boros could still have hacked him into bloody pieces.
It was a good thing that Jaime wore no sword; elsewise he would have ripped his blade out, and if Ser Brynden did not slay him, the archers on the walls most surely would.
“Well, shut your bloody mouth and kill me if you can.”
It pleases him to humiliate me nightly. It might please him even more to kill me.
Dondarrion was rash enough to attack, however, he would find himself facing forty knights, every one worth ten outlaws and a hundred brokenmen. And if the lightning lord has more than that? a voice inside him asked, but a harsher voice replied, why, then I see if Cersei sheds a tear for me. (draft)
clearly a man whose main motivation for his biggest and most defining choices is self-preservation
